


The Tasks We Bear

by TheMangosity



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 03:41:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17052425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMangosity/pseuds/TheMangosity
Summary: Link has tried everything, but that mask refuses to find peace.





	The Tasks We Bear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Resilur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Resilur/gifts).



> Merry Christmas!! I hope you enjoy this story! The things you asked for in your letter were kind of similar to another Majora’s Mask story I wrote for Yuletide called “The Masks We Wear.” So I wrote this story as a sort of companion to that one, but you don’t have to read that one first to understand this one. Again, Merry Christmas and I hope you enjoy the story!

After he emerged victorious against the evils that plagued Termina, and after saying goodbye to Tatl and her brother, Link began to travel around Termina with no real destination. He wasn’t quite sure how he had even gotten here, so he wasn’t quite sure how to get back home. He wasn’t too eager to return to Hyrule anyway. He never really fit in with the children of the forest. Now that he no longer had a fairy, he would feel out of place among them. It was best if he didn’t return.

His heart ached for Navi, but he had no idea where to begin looking for her. Termina seemed like as good a place as any to begin his search, and so he set out to find any clues he could. He traveled all around Termina, but his search turned up empty.

Once he got caught in a really bad storm. He couldn’t see a thing ahead of him, and he got all turned around. By complete coincidence, he found himself back at Clock Town. It was exactly the same as he had left it. The only thing different was the clock tower, which stood even taller than it had before.

Link felt a flood of memories. Even with the pressure of having to save the land, he had always liked this place. The town was friendly for the most part, and the sunsets were to die for. Not even living the same three days over and over again had ruined this place. He was very tempted to settle down here, but he knew he couldn’t do that. He had to find Navi. He just had to.

And so Link decided to make Clock Town his base of operations. He wasn’t settling down, not really. He was just making sure he had the option of sleeping in a warm bed each night if he wanted to. He had a sizeable wallet of rupees from all the monsters he fought daily, and so he was able to purchase a room at the inn, which had become more like the town’s homey apartment building. Anju the inn keeper remembered him as the child who had saved them, and she had no problems taking him as her newest tenant. What she had a problem with was a child roaming the countryside with no apparent protection, but luckily she didn’t try to stop him.

With a home to call his own, Link no longer had to carry so many of his belongings with him everywhere he went. The majority of his belongings consisted of the many masks he had collected in his journey to defeat Majora. Before parting ways with the mask salesman, Link had sold him some of the ones he thought were the most dangerous. He trusted the mask salesman to know what to do with them and who not to sell them to.

Other masks Link destroyed. He didn’t trust anyone with their power.

The masks he worried about the most were the ones that housed the remnants of those lost spirits. It would have been far too dangerous to allow anyone to get their hands on such power. He would have destroyed them, but they were too powerful. Nothing he did worked, not even the powder kegs made by the Gorons.

He kept those masks in a magic bag that never got full, so that he could keep them on his person at all times. Although he feared what would happen if they fell into the wrong hands, he didn’t fear the masks themselves. Along his journey he had gotten to know them. At first they had been full of pain, the anguish left behind by the spirits that had created them, but over time that pain slowly faded.

Although Link occasionally felt some remnant of their former pain, for the most part all of them were healed, all of them except for the Fierce Deity mask. It hummed with deep sadness. It was a grief so powerful that the first time Link held it, he had almost cried on the spot.

He had found along his journey that the mask found some peace when he helped people and spread joy. Link had tried helping people as much as he could, but that only ever worked for so long. The mask would find peace for a little while, but it would always eventually return to its sadness. Nothing Link did would bring that mask any lasting peace.

Despite the mask’s sadness, keeping the mask around wasn’t so bad. It felt like an old friend. The mask couldn’t think, exactly, but it was a gentle presence he could feel throughout the day. He felt less lonely and afraid with the mask in his pouch, and so he did what he could to keep it safe. Someday he would free it, he just needed to figure out how.

The Fierce Deity mask became a comfortable presence in Link’s life, and he thought that perhaps the mask felt that way about him too. Link came to expect its presence to the point that he hardly noticed it.

If he was being honest with himself, part of him didn’t want to free the mask. It had become so familiar having the mask there in his pouch that he couldn’t really imagine what it would be like without it. He knew that was selfish, but the mask had helped him through some awful times.

He had once considered giving up his search for Navi. He had no idea where she was and he had absolutely no clues that would lead to her. He had laid in his bed and contemplated what it would be like if he stopped going out every few days looking for leads, moved to Clock Town permanently and settled down for real. Before he could make a real decision, the mask had hummed so loudly that Link had bolted upright in his bed. It wasn’t the mask’s usual grief. It was strength, determination.

That had given Link the strength to carry on with his mission. He knew he would see Navi again someday. He just had to keep trying.

Even as the mask helped him in such crucial ways, Link found that he still could not bring the mask peace. He wanted so badly to help it. He didn’t know what to do.

Even when he despaired that he would never free the mask from its grief, the mask never seemed bitter about its own despair. In fact, the mask encouraged Link in everything he did. If the mask believed in him, how could he not believe in himself? And so Link continued his mission to find Navi, to spread happiness, and the mere fact that Link chose to keep living helped to lift the mask’s burden more than Link could ever know.


End file.
